Grasp the essentials needed to begin playing acoustic or electric guitar. You'll learn an easy approach to get you playing quickly, through a combination of exploring the instrument, performance technique, and basic music theory.
For students who have long thought about picking up the acoustic or electric guitar, this course will provide an easy-access foundation that will get you playing. When first learning guitar, it is important to have the material presented in stages, in an enjoyable way that allows you to grasp the basics of the instrument and music. The course begins simply with the parts of the guitar, the names of the strings, tuning, and technique—whether finger-style or pick. It then explores the basics of music theory with such topics as scales, triads, power chords, and fingering and shapes.
At the end of this course, students will understand the structure, parts, and accessories of the instrument, in addition to an understanding of its basic maintenance. Electric guitar players will learn the operation of their instrument along with basic options for amplification, effect pedals, and sounds. Students will also learn to develop correct technique and apply theory concepts to their playing. They will have the foundational knowledge necessary to pursue most intermediate guitar courses.

RF

This is a guitar class, done with class. Loved the teacher, Thaddius. After taking this class I got a job at a church playing guitar. This class increased my income by thousands a year.

DC

Oct 01, 2016

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Great introduction to guitar, before this course I already played acoustic guitar but with this course I've got many techical info I didn't know, e.g. on guitar positions and scales

From the lesson

Putting it All Together: The Pentatonic Scale and Songs

Now that you have the "science" of the guitar in your fingers, you will learn a couple of songs. You will do this by using melody (from the scales) and harmony (from the chords) we have learned. You will also learn an essential scale for playing melodies and soloing.

Taught By

Thaddeus Hogarth

Associate Professor

Transcript

[MUSIC] So that was a pentatonic scale. Now we're going to take a look at a song that uses the pentatonic scale as a melody. Songs often use pieces of scales as melody. Over some kind of harmony. Usually the harmony is some kind of chord. Let's take a look at the chart for this song. The name of this song is the Blue Guitar Blues. This song is written in what we call blues form, which is part of a great American tradition of music. The song uses power cords. It uses quarter notes, eighht notes, half notes, and whole notes. All of which we've covered. Now on guitar in this level, it's very difficult to play both the melody and the chords at the same time. So there are a couple of different ways we can get around that. The easiest of course is to get a friend to play the chords while you play the melody, or you can play the chords while your friend plays the melody. Another way, which we're going to do right now, is I'm going to use a little device, a pedal called a looper. And with this looper, I'm going to play the chords first. And then after I have those recorded, I'm going to go back and play the melody over those chords. So that way, we get both melody and harmony playing at the same time. Let's take another look at the chart. Now here we see the first thing that we should pay attention to is what we call the time signature. Now this is a simple tune in 4 4. Most important thing for you to remember is that a tune in 4 4 has four beats in each measure. We're going to start by layering the chords. So, we have a G power chord, we have a C power chord, and we have a D power chord. There are only three chords in the whole song, that played in different places and they're held for different lengths of time. We can see the slashes mean that the chord is played for each of those beats. Now I'm going to use my looper, and I'm going to start playing a chord. I'm going to play one downstroke for each slash. Now I'm going to set my metronome at 66 beats a minute. That's a good tempo. It'll give you enough time to change to the next chord. [SOUND] [SOUND] One, two, three, four and G, two, three, four. One ,two, three, four and G, two, three. [SOUND] Four, and one, two, three, four. And C, two, three, four. And one, two, three, four. And G, two, three, four. And one, two, three, four. And D, two, three, four. And C, two, three, four. And G, two, three, four. And D, two, three, four, and. So there I have the chords and I've recorded for my song. And you can see that I played a G power chord, G5. Then I changed to a C power chord, right here. Then I changed back to a G power chord, G5. [MUSIC] Then I switched to the d for four beats, then I switched to the C for four beats. And now we're back at G. And then D. [MUSIC] Now, we're going to talk about the melody. We have the chords recorded. We're going to talk about the melody for this song, Blue Guitar Blues. The melody is made up of notes from a pentatonic scale. In this case it's notes from the G-minor pentatonic scale. Now we've learned our pentatonic scale previously and we're going to put that to good use now by playing a melody. The melody often times for blues songs is rooted in the pentatonic scale or the blue scale which very close to pentatonic scale. Here we go one, two three, four and [MUSIC] Let's take a look at the melody. If we look at the measure one, we'll see remember that pentatonic scale that we learned it sounded like. [MUSIC] Quick pentatonic review. [MUSIC] If we look at the first measure, it's actually just an ascending. [MUSIC] And descending minor pentaton. [MUSIC] Landing on the G and holding the G for four beats. That's a whole-note G. Play that again. [MUSIC] Now if we look at measure three. It's actually a repetition of measure one. We actually play exactly the same thing one more time. [MUSIC] When we get to measure five we have that C chord, the C five chord. It's a slightly different melody. Again, using parts of the same scale. And ending again on a whole note, C. Sounds like this. [SOUND] One more time. [SOUND] One, two Three, four. Measure seven, we go right back to the original melody that we played in measure one and two. Sounds like this again. [MUSIC] We get to measure nine. Slightly different melody again. This one uses quarter notes. On an F. One, two, three, [MUSIC]. The quarter notes are followed by a descending pentatonic scale. So it's like one, two, three, four [MUSIC]. The following measure has the same rhythmic pattern. This time, it's on a C. Two quarter not Cs followed by a descending minor pentatonic scale. One, two, three, four. One more time. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Now for measure 11 we go right back to the original melody. [MUSIC] Which is part of the ascending and descending scale only this time for measure 12 we go two half notes. The D held for two beats, and the F held for two beats. Sounds like this one, two, three, four, and one, two, three, four, and. The whole melody again sounds like this. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, Two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. [SOUND] And that's our blue guitar blues. The melody's based on the pentatonic, and it uses the power chords that we learned from the chord section of the course.

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